LOOK UP: A low-flying B17 cruised over the Bradford area
Wednesday morning.

Bob Slike phoned us with the report, saying the big plane’s
identity was unmistakable – big tail, four engines, and the
distinctive sound. The time was about 9:50 a.m. and the plane was
over the Derrick City area.

Bob tells us he contacted the Bradford airport but was told it
had not landed there. Can anyone provide information?

QUEHANNA BIRDS: We were fascinated with a preliminary report
from the Pennsylvania Game Commission that the death of at least
140 birds near the Quehanna wild area likely was caused by
“collisions with buildings, towers, wires and other objects in a
compound deep in the woods of northcentral Pennsylvania.”

Further, the birds of a large variety of species apparently died
on a single date – Oct. 8.

And, believe it or not, weather was the major factor.

Commission ornithologist Doug Gross said the dead birds, found
at the Quehanna Boot Camp, represented a set of southbound,
long-distance, neo-tropical migrant songbirds, mostly of boreal
origins.

The blackpoll warblers, which made up the majority of specimens,
were bound for South America via the United States, with a probable
ultimate origin somewhere in the conifer forests of Canada.

Gross noted that this species takes one of the longest migration
routes of any songbird in the world, including the longest
trans-oceanic flight of any songbird – over the Atlantic Ocean from
the Northeast portion of the United States to South America.

According to local weather reports for Oct. 8, the conditions
were classic for a fall bird collision scenario: a decreasingly low
cloud horizon accompanying an advancing low front and ground fog
that followed clear skies associated with a high front.

“The birds probably left their day roosts with stars over their
heads and encountered more clouds and then dense cover and fog
toward dawn as they flew south into a rainstorm that covered the
state over the first part of the weekend,” Gross said.

“This was a fairly major collision event at a remote location
with a fairly low profile; no tall buildings, some power and
telephone lines and only a fairly small tower at site.”

None of the buildings were more than two stories tall. Lights at
the facility may have attracted the birds into the compound in an
otherwise unlit forested region.

More on this subject soon.